


Am I Too Far Gone (To Be Running Home)

by superscavenger



Series: The Sharpe Family [2]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: F/F, Fix-it fic, Fluff, Light Angst, the sharpe family i created strikes again, time wobbly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-10
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2019-04-21 04:37:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14277069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superscavenger/pseuds/superscavenger
Summary: Everything seems to crumbling around her, but Ava knows she has to confront the one part of her life that she hasn't yet had the courage to do: the family that have called her daughter and sister.  But it seems she's not the only one feeling confrontational.Post 3x17, with 3x18 spoilers.





	Am I Too Far Gone (To Be Running Home)

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry I've been completely AWOL for a couple months, but it's my finals guys...you know the life. This just sort of came out of me without my being able to stop it instead of studying. So enjoy. Reading the previous part of the series would be advisable before reading it. Hope you like!

Ava goes up to the door, and her whole body is shaking.She's not entirely sure she's ready for this; hell, she definitely isn't ready for this.

 

But when will you ever be ready to go in and ask their so-called family why they've been lying to you about you being their daughter, sister, aunt for what appears to be your entire life?

 

One, two, three knocks.

 

Her heart is pounding out of her chest.

 

The door is opened by her father, well...not her father, but someone who's been masquerading as her father for years.

 

'Oh hi, sweetie! Come in, we weren't expecting you!'

 

She smiles minutely, walking in and wiping her feet on the doormat before coming and seeing Sophie sat with Lyra on the sofa.The little one had grown quite a bit, and is easily walking and talking around the living room floor. 

 

'Hey sis!I was just here visiting for a couple days, what a nice surprise you turned up!'

 

Ava can't help but smile at her sister, but it doesn't last long.When she looks at all their faces for too long, she's just bitterly reminded at how fake all of this is.

 

'Auntie Aves!'

 

'Hi babygirl,' she says, and her voice cracks as the little one launches towards her.She doesn't have much choice but to pick her up, and she hugs her hard, knowing that the conversation to come will be harder than any conversation she's ever had in her life.

 

After putting Lyra down she doesn't really move a muscle.

 

'Is pretty eyes with you?'

 

'No babygirl, she had to work.It's just me today.'

 

'Okay,' Lyra replies, satisfied but a little disappointed.She clambers back up onto the sofa next to Robyn.

 

'Ava dear, what's wrong? You seem awfully out of sorts,' Robyn notes, her eyes narrowing slightly as she regards Ava's rigid posture.

 

'You're our daughter hon,' Don says.It makes her skin crawl. 'You can tell us anything.'

 

'But I'm not, am I?'

 

Sophie's eyes shoot up to meet Ava's, and she sees the disappointment in her younger sister's eyes.

 

'What are you talking about?'

 

'The jig's up. I know.'

 

Don's brows furrow and it takes a moment, but Robyn is the first to cotton on to what she's saying.

 

'Ava - '

 

Even with Robyn just saying her name, her anger flares in the pit of her stomach.

 

'No, I don't um, I don't wanna hear it. Apologies don't matter right now, all I want is an explanation.'

 

Don looks so pained and it breaks Ava's heart, but she's not letting her guard down.They lied to her. 

 

'Honey, please - '

 

'No, Da- Don.Please don't.You've been lying to me for what, five years about the fact that I'm a clone? Hatched in a government lab from the future? Actually wait, no.It's probably only been about 7 months, hasn't it? Considering how many AVAs have been through the doors of the Bureau.'

 

'What on earth do you mean?' Sophie chimes in, and Ava's mind wanders for a second; maybe they don't even know how many times she's been interchanged and replaced.

 

God, her stomach is turning like crazy.

 

'That's beside the point.How did this start? Is any of this real? Are you guys, what, being paid or something? God, I feel sick.How could you do this to me? Actually no, how could you do this to anyone?'

 

'Ava, shut up and listen for a minute.'

 

'Don't talk to me like that, I'm not your daughter.'

 

'That's precisely the point.You are.You are our daughter, however long it is that we've known you.Just...sit down.Don, make some tea please.Just let us explain. We'll start from the beginning.'

 

At that moment, the doorbell rings. 

 

Sophie gets up, stopping Don from going to the door and ushering him away to the kitchen.

 

'I'll get it.Mom, go ahead.'

 

Robyn looks back from her biological daughter, and towards Ava with a sympathetic glint in her eyes.

 

'It was around six years ago when a man came to our front door.I knew his name, but I'd never met him before.Rip Hunter, his name was.He said he had an important job for me.One that was going to take up a lot of my life, and that he needed this from me for the Bureau to be created and run properly, to the best of its potential.I knew how important it was for it to run, so I agreed.'

 

Robyn stops as they hear distant angry talking, and Ava gets up to go see what's going on, but she doesn't get far.

 

From the hallway, she sees none other than a thundering Sara Lance storm into the living room, having bypassed Sophie and with fiery eyes on Robyn.

 

'You have got a ton of explaining to do, how could you do this to -'

 

She looks around the room and sees Ava standing there, confusion and a hint of anger in her features.

 

'Ava',she finishes. 

 

'Sara.'

 

They regard each other for a moment.Ava hasn't seen Sara since she told her she loved her on Waverider.

 

'What are you doing here?' Ava asks, a hint of disciplinary annoyance in her voice.

 

'I came here to give your so-called parents a piece of my mind.I'm uh...I didn't think you'd be here.I'm sorry,' Sara says, clearly quite remorseful about trying to do this without consulting Ava first.

 

'It's okay.I was just getting answers myself.'

 

Sara nods with a an almost wistful sadness. 

 

'Maybe you should leave, Miss Lance. This is family business.'

 

'Don't.Sara has been more of a family to me in the last few months than you are right now,' Ava declares angrily, and Sara looks at her with a love so pure in her eyes that Ava just wants to surge forward and kiss her. 'She stays.'

 

'As you wish, Ava,' Robyn declares.

 

Sara walks over to the sofa opposite Robyn, where Ava had been sitting before she'd gotten up.They sit down together.Sara doesn't grab Ava's hand, but she puts her own opposite hand on her own knee so that it's there.

 

Just in case.

 

'As I was saying,' Robyn says as Don brings in a cup of tea, and Ava takes it from him as she's done so many times before - or thought she had before.'Rip came to us.He said he'd found the perfect agent for the bureau: strong, smart, quick-thinking and rational. That it was a clone from a future time, and that he didn't want the only thoughts that the clone had about her life to be...well...about being a clone.So he'd erased the memories and it was an almost clean slate.

 

'He said that...well, the clone's brain was essentially malleable.He'd implanted a few basic memories in, about her having two parents and a sister, and a brother. But everything else could be almost...moulded over time.He said he would pay us each year, and he started that first year with quite the hefty sum.'

 

Ava grabs onto Sara hand, and clenches it so hard Sara thinks her hand might break. But she doesn't care.

 

'But we spent most of that time, when the first clone was still coming to us more frequently because the Bureau wasn't fully formed, giving her these experiences she'd never had before.We took her on holidays.We made sure she knew what was going on around her, she started to develop habits of her own with us, around us.Once the Bureau was formed, she started her job and it was common knowledge that I was the only one who'd pretend to know about the Bureau's existence and her caliber within it. She stopped coming so frequently after that. Because you...and the others barely ever came we've never had to tell friends. The only ones who know are in this house and your brother.Jay and Richard don't even know.They haven't been around long enough, so that was easier to deal with.'

 

Sara hasn't taken her eyes off Ava for Robyn's entire explanation.There are tears tracking down her face now.

 

'How much of it was really real?' Ava says brokenly, looking down at her and Sara's entwined hands.

 

'Anything...anything before six years ago never happened. But everything, I swear, after that was real, Avie. Paris was real, for example. We did go.'

 

'What did you mean earlier?'

 

'When?' Ava says, looking up at Don who is on the brink of tears too.

 

'When you said about the other AVAs?'

 

Ava can't bring herself to say it, so she looks to Sara.Sara gives her a reassuring look, before looking up at the other three in the room.Lyra is blissfully unaware and is still playing with her White Canary and Atom dolls in the corner. 

 

'Since Rip started doing this, there have been eleven other AVAs.I'm guessing that, due to the fact Ava remembers everything from the past six years as well as from before, that she's implanted with the older clones' memories each time.'

 

Robyn's eyebrows shoot up and Sophie looks thoroughly devastated. 

 

Ava can't help it. 

 

She breaks.

 

She begins to sob, not even bringing her hand up to her face to wipe her tears.

 

Sara just puts her hand that's closer to Ava, and free around her shoulders and rests her forehead on the back of her shoulder.

 

She's barely keeping it together herself.

 

All of Ava's emotions since she found out about herself are just exploding out of her and, she hates the loss of composure, but god does she need this.

 

She feels stripped bare, and it's simultaneously painful and freeing at the same time.

 

Suddenly, Sara lifts her head to see Sophie kneeling in front of Ava, and she's let quite a few tears free as well.

 

'Ava,' she says softly, and Ava ignores her as the tears drip from her face as she sobs even harder at the sound of her so-called sister's voice. 'Avie, look at me.'

 

'Why are you...calling me that, I'm not, I'm not your sister,' Ava says and the sheer crestfallen tone that's in her voice cracks the hearts of every person in the room.Even Lyra looks distressed and Don goes over to pick her up, watching his daughters.

 

'Don't you dare ever say that.Do you understand me? Don't you dare.'

 

Ava finally looks up at her, and Sara looks up at the ceiling as her eyes threaten to leak their own tears.

 

'You may have only technically known me what, 7 months, but that does not mean you're not my sister.You have taken care of my child before in that 7 months, you've come to see us more since Christmas.And it doesn't matter because ever since the first version of you came along, we have accepted her into the family and loved her like she was our own.You are part of our family, however long you specifically have been seeing us with your own eyes. Mom, tell her what happened.'

 

'What happened?' Sara asks, desperate for answers.

 

'A year the bureau was formed, after we'd had that year of you getting to know your life and forming the memories, Rip came around to give us that year's money for pretending.But we'd all found that...well, we weren't pretending anymore.You had become my daughter, Don's daughter, Sophie and Stefan's sister. You were part of the family, and you don't pay to keep up a masquerade when there's not masquerade to keep,' Robyn says, and even she's beginning to get emotional now.

 

'We told him to stick his money.We didn't want it anymore.By that point, you'd become our daughter. You're our little girl, honey.Whatever anybody else will ever say.We can say that about any version that came before you, the one that's sat here now; we cherished them all as if they were our own, and we still do with you.We always will,' Don finishes, and Lyra starts slapping him gently on the shoulder and he puts her down. 

 

She runs over to Ava, and Sophie moves a little so she can get into the little circle. 

 

'Don't cry Auntie Aves,' she says, and gestures that she wants to be picked up. 

 

Ava cries through her first genuine smile in weeks, as Sara lets go of her hand so Ava can pick Lyra up and hug her as tight as she can without squeezing her uncomfortably.

 

'I love you,' Lyra whispers in her ear, and Ava sobs as she replies. 

 

'I love you too, babygirl.'

 

Sara wipes at her eyes now, the tears flowing freely down her face.

 

'We're going to help you through this, sis. We'll make more new, incredible memories, but we don't need to forget the ones before.Some of them may not have been real, but the way they make you feel? That is.Your heart is still real. We still adore you.We adore the ones who came before but we adore you more now.In the last 6 months you've been here more than any of the others ever were.'

 

Ava smiles at her sister through the tears. She reaches a hand from where she has Lyra on her lap, and grabs Sophie's hand hard.Her sister's reciprocating smile is almost enough to make her feel entirely better.

 

'Hey sweetheart, I just need to talk to Sara for a minute.Can I put you down?' Ava says, wiping her tears away as she lets go of Sophie's hand.

 

'I wanna cuddle with pretty eyes first.'

 

Everyone in the room laughs at the nickname, including Sara. She's grown very fond of this little girl.

 

'Come here, munchkin,' Sara says, opening her arms as Ava rises from her seat, going towards her parents.

 

'I'll be back,' Ava says, and Sara gives her a wink. It's not cheeky, it's simply an reassurance. An affirmation. 

 

Ava knows that she's never been so comfortable around anyone. Even after everything.

 

Robyn stands and goes to stand next to Don, Sophie sitting next to Sara who has Lyra in her lap, palming at her face.

 

'We're so sorry we lied to you, Ava,' Robyn says.It's admission of guilt that she'd never expected from what she remembers of the woman; she tries to block out anything before, but it's a cornerstone of her mother's personality that she's not normally one to admit she's wrong.

 

'I understand why you did it.To protect me.But I don't...it's going to take me so long to really understand all this,' Ava declares, looking at her father who tilts his head with a look of sheer sympathy.'I know the timelines but I still don't know what's really real, I don't know exactly when I was brought in after the other AVAs, it could have been six months, it could have been longer but...I just don't know.'

 

'We'll figure it out together, darling.We promise,' Robyn says, and she puts her hand on Ava's cheek.Ava can't help but sob once more at the action.

 

'For what it's worth?Sophie's right.In the last six months, you've been a different woman to what we've known from the past.Apparently that's literal. But it also shows what an exception you are to the rule.'

 

'Put it this way, kitten. Before, you'd never fallen in love. That's changed.'

 

'And you must be something remarkable if you became Director of the most covert government organisation.'

 

'My boss got ripped to bits by a gorilla, it wasn't exactly chosen.'

 

'There's a reason you were second in command in the first place, and from what I've heard recently? You're doing a much better job that Bennett ever could have done.'

 

Ava smiles a little at Robyn's words.

 

'Is it...is it weird that I still want to call you mom and dad?'

 

'No.Please don't stop calling us that if if doesn't make you uncomfortable.However long or short we may have been your parents for, we're always going to be your parents. We love you like our own, kitten,' Don says. 

 

'And we're goddamn proud of you, Ava,' Robyn insists quietly.Ava can't help herself then; she wraps her arms around her mother and her father wraps his arms around both of them, resting his chin on Ava's head as they embrace.

 

'I'm sorry I barged in earlier,' Sara says.

 

'Don't worry about it. You were doing it because you care about Ava, it's understandable.'

 

Sara looks at Ava hugging her parents, and smiles wistfully, rubbing Lyra's back as the little girl begins to fall asleep, sat on her lap with her head resting against Sara's chest.

 

'She hasn't smiled like this since she found out,' Sara observes, and Sophie looks at her with pain in her eyes.

 

'God, I can't imagine what it must have felt like,' Sophie replies, looking back at her sister.

 

'She may have not been the same person six months ago, but I can't imagine my life without her in it anymore. Lyra, Richard, everyone loves her so much.'

 

'So do I.'

 

Sophie snaps her head round to meet Sara's eyes, and she finds the woman to be completely serious.

 

'Love?'

 

'Mmhmm.I told her about a week ago.'

 

'Did she...'

 

'No, but I didn't expect her to.I just needed her to know.'

 

'I don't think you'll have to wait very long for her to say it,' Sophie says, gesturing towards Ava who's now alone behind the sofa, her parents having gone to set the dinner table.

 

'She did say she wanted to talk to you.'

 

Sara looks at Sara with her eyebrows raised, an almost playful glint in her eye.

 

Sophie wordlessly takes Lyra off Sara's lap, and she goes over to Ava, grasping her hand and bringing her into the hallway.

 

'You wanted to talk?'

 

'Yeah, um...it was just about the last time we talked.'

 

'You want a take two of the saloon. Right?'

 

'Um...what are you talking about?I haven't seen you since the Waverider.'

 

'...oh wow, you must not get the message until later on, then...'

 

'What do you mean?'

 

'I shouldn't say anything else, but don't worry about that right now, just...ask what you were gonna ask.'

 

'Okay um...well...did you mean what you said?'

 

'When I told you I loved you.'

 

Ava screws up her face, nodding minutely.

 

Sara smiles, and repeats what she said in the saloon. The conversation might actually finish this time.

 

'What do you think?'

 

'I think that I...I guess I don't know a lot about what's real right now. But...I know that I love you too.'

 

Sara smiles so wide she thinks her face will break.

 

Ava leans in a kisses her deeply, but softly, without any need to rush.The rest their foreheads on each other's, and smile at the beauty of a moment that they've both been waiting for for quite a while now.

 

Suddenly, Ava's time courier begins to beep.

 

'It's a distress beacon from the....it's from the Waverider,' Ava says, looking up to Sara for answers.

 

'Yes, I've already been through that part.'

 

'I see...well, without spoilers, any advice for me?'

 

'Actually? Yeah.Let it play out, don't smack Ray and well...' Sara laughs to herself a little, 'have fun.'

 

'You're something else, Miss Lance.'

 

'As are you, Miss Sharpe.'

 

Ava taps her courier a few more times, obviously giving orders to her inferiors to get the other recruits to the Bureau. Then she leans in again, kissing Sara firmly.Sara kisses back with all she has before the kiss is ended, too soon for her liking.

 

They both go through to the kitchen where everyone is helping to prepare dinner.

 

'I'm sorry but I have to go,' Ava declares, 'duty calls.'

 

'Will we be seeing you for dinner? Maybe in the next week?'

 

Ava smiles and looks at Sara. 

 

'How about this time next week, 7:30?' Ava says, looking pointedly at Sara.She obviously doesn't want this temporal mix-up to be more than a one time thing.

 

Sara winks at her playfully.'Sounds good to me.See you guys next week, Tuesday, April 17th, 7:30.'

 

The Sharpes look at her strangely before smiling at her, as she sees herself out the front door.

 

Ava looks back at her parents and sister.'You guys okay to fill Stefan in about...all this?'

 

'Of course, sweetheart. And we mean it.We'll figure this out together.'

 

'Yeah. We will.'

 

'Auntie Aves has to go?'

 

Ava smiles at her niece.

 

'Yes munchkin, but I'll be back with Sara next week,' she reminds her, and Lyra smiles, satisfied.

 

'We love you, kitten.'

 

'Yeah, baby sis.We do.'

 

Ava smiles with new tears threatening to spill.

 

'I love you guys too.'

 

With that, she opens a portal to the Time Bureau where Jax, Kuasa and Helen of Troy are already waiting.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from The Great Divide by Ira Wolf. 
> 
> Come yell at me @ superscavenger on Tumblr


End file.
